Page 58 of Ugly Duckling
“You’ve been served, Mr. Penn.”
Gunner didn’t reach to take it.
Also, I didn’t move, because if I did, I would explode and punch that smug look off that bitch’s old face.
“She’s there for two days a week, and only once was she there for twelve hours. That was the day that I was stuck in a wreck on the interstate,” Gunner snarled. “She’s in my arms every day by four in the afternoon, and I take her to work with me.”
“That’s another concerning factor, yes. It’s unsafe to have her with you,” the bitch of a “grandmother” said. “We’re also worried that she has no female influence, and she gets bounced around through your disgusting, criminal club too much. We’re bringing all of our grievances to the judge, and we will be discussing this in detail tomorrow. But let’s just say that Lottie will thrive more with two solid people living with her, where she doesn’t have to wonder where she’s staying that day. She can be at home, with us, twenty-four-seven. You can’t offer her that, but we can. Do the right thing, Mr. Penn.”
The words came out of my mouth before I could stop them.
“Oh, well, that’s false information then,” I purred. “We’re getting married as soon as we figure out a date and Lottie is already expecting a younger brother or sister, so she won’t be alone at all. She’ll have a sibling to love on in the very near future.
“Oh, well, that’s weird.” I turned so I could bat my eyes at Gunner. “They don’t count you having a fiancée that lives with you as a positive female influence?”
Gunner’s eyes met mine, and luckily he was able to hide his confusion.
“Apparently not,” he drawled. “I guess having a part-time working stepmom living with you who is a medalist in the Olympics isn’t all that positive.”
I tapped my lips. “You’re right. But we can also talk about how we’re expecting a little brother or sister for Lottie soon, and how their grandparents want to take her away so she can’t spend time with him or her.”
Gunner stiffened slightly, but I’d gone too far to back down now.
“Thank you for serving these in enough time that we could bring this up with our lawyer,” I said as I took the papers from the uncomfortable-looking, official-looking man. “We are sorry that you had to be pulled into the middle of this farce.”
The man backed away once he no longer had the papers.
I turned to pat Gunner on the chest. “Let’s call our lawyer, honey. We don’t want to wait on this. She needs time to prepare.”
“You’re joking, right?”
I turned to survey the older couple.
I wasn’t sure of their names.
All I knew was that the man I was currently hanging on had suffered enough.
An intense wave of anger overwhelmed me, and I squared my shoulders and narrowed my eyes at them.
“No, we’re not kidding,” I snapped. “Who should be kidding is you. What kind of vicious attack dogs are y’all? What you should be thinking about right now is that Lottie just found Gunner. She’s spent her entire small life up in the air, because her mother died before she was born. Her father, or who she thought was her father, wasn’t her father. And Audric struggled greatly with finding his actual father, Gunner. Gunner then had to find out that he had a daughter, after he’d always thought that he would never be a father again.” I moved closer, my finger raised in the air between us. “Do you think that it’s not going to come out in court that this man behind me is a great father? That he busted his hump from a very young age to provide his son with everything that one could need or want? A son who then died in a tragic school shooting at the age of five. This man behind me has spent years trying to make up for the loss of his son’s life. He’s gone from school to school to school all over the continental United States. He’s sacrificed. He’s struggled. He’s spent his own millions on making schools a safer place. So parents like you don’t ever have to know what it feels like to lose their child to a school shooting. Shame on you for trying to take his newly found daughter away from him. I’m sure you have no clue.” I moved even closer and felt a finger loop through the belt loop of my jeans, holding me so that I couldn’t get any closer to the assholes in front of me, “what it feels like to lose a child.” I narrowed my eyes. “Because you would have to have a heart to feel something like that. But you’re trying to make this man suffer through it for a second time? What kind of monsters does that make you?”
The grandmother narrowed her eyes. “You don’t know us!”
“I know enough,” I snapped. “I know that you have no morals. I know that if you truly cared, you would’ve been there from the beginning, and maybe if you’d been nice on how you went about it, Gunner wouldn’t be fighting you back tooth and nail. I know that there wouldn’t be lawyers involved because Gunner is a nice man. He knows that this would be hard for normal people. However, the fact that he’s having to fight this in court means to me that he’s tried doing this the nice way, and you wouldn’t let him. Therefore, he’s having to get a lawyer to fight for custody of his child. Meanwhile, that child is so damn happy. She loves him like the air she breathes. You are truly missing out.”
The woman fisted her hands, and somehow I just knew that she was going to hit me.
And she did.
She reached out and raised her hand, swung, and connected with my face.
I let it happen because that would look good in court.
A grandmother fighting for custody of her grandchild, raising a hand to that child’s future stepmom? Yeah, because moving her in with them would make her “safer.”
“I know that you better get her the fuck away from here, right now, or I might very well retaliate against you, Luciano,” Gunner growled, pulling me back into the protective curve of his arms.
Both of his hands went to my hips, and he pulled me in tight enough that I could feel him from shoulder blade to knee.
